I've been using pyTivo for a while with SD and it works wonderfully. I am having an issue with HD files.

I am running an S3 with the latest version (9.4, I think). I tried 2 different forks (the 10.15 wgw and am currently using the 08.20 wmcbrine) with no luck.

When I use pyTivo to transfer HD content to my S3, it does not deal with letterboxed HD content properly. If the HD is full screen, it will transfer and display properly. If the content is letterboxed, it transfers it at 4:3.

My pyTivo config file is barebones. I added one section:

------
[_tivo_648xxxxxxxxxxxx]
aspect169=true
width=1366
------

My TV manufacturer recommends a resolution of 1366x768. I've tried playing with both the width and the height, but it never seems to make any difference; the letterboxed content always ends up 4:3.

The only way I can get it to display at the full width of the TV without distortion is to change the TV aspect ratio in my tivo settings (it is currently set to smart) to force everything to 16:9. The problem is this messes with regular SD television.

Is there something else I should be doing?

Thanks in advance for any help.

When you say "messes with regular SD television" what do you mean?

I keep my S3 set to Native resolution, 16:9 shape and LCD Aspect (or at least I think that's what it's called off the top of my head). I also set width=1920 and height=1080 in my pyTivo.conf. 1280x720 content transfers and fills the screen. 1280x528 or other cropped content displays properly with a little black at the top and bottom. SD content is pillarboxed both when I transfer it and when I just watch it off the cable.

Are you trying to get SD content to fill your screen instead of being pillarboxed? On the rare occasions when I actually wants this, I tend to use my TV's zoom controls and not mess with the Tivo's settings. But that's just me.

Also, I second wmcbrine's suggestion that you not use non-standard resolution settings. Choose either 1920x1080 or 1280x720. The native res of your TV isn't a standard Tivo output resolution.

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As far as what's happening, here's a picture of my TV. The video file is 1280x528. Notice that the image is letterboxed and pillarboxed. (Also, disregard my daughter's handprint on the TV!) I would like to be able to see this video fit the entire width of the screen without having to resort to changing my TV aspect ratio.

Note, when I set TV output format to native (instead of hybrid), this is what standard def TV looks like. The image shown is letterboxed, but note that the image is pillarboxed twice-- the first is the 4:3 constraint, but the second pillarboxing actually squeezes and distorts the image inside that 4:3. Now, I know I can change it with the aspect button, but it's a step shouldn't have to take if I can get pyTivo to send the video at it's original resolution.

And as I've said above, 1280x720 video displays perfectly with no adjustment on my part. It's only when the height is less than 720 that I have a problem.

Edit: also just tried width=1920 and height=1080 with no luck.

What happens if you leave out optres or set it to false?

For Tivo HD/S3 units, if the video res is below your width/height settings, then pyTivo will send the video over at it's native res. If the video is 1280x528, that's what is sent to your Tivo. How your Tivo and the TV deal with it from there is not under pyTivo's control.

It feels like your TV is auto stretching the 1280x720 signal to fill it's native resolution, but that anything not 1280x720 is being treated as a literal centered window inside the 1366x768 as if it were a computer monitor. Does your TV have some fill screen control that you might need to enable?

Also, you still haven't elaborated on what happens to your SD video when you set TV aspect ratio to 16:9.

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Python 3.0 released today. Any chance of a pyTivo Windows installer update?

Many thanks in advance.

At first glance, it looks like Python 3.0 introduces language changes so it might not be as easy as just updating the installer.

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Yes, big incompatible language changes. It's not a simple matter of running it with 3.0; it's a port. That may happen eventually. However, for now, you should not try to use pyTivo with Python 3.0. That goes for every other Python app in existence, too, unless it's specifically labelled as being for 3.0, or compatible with it. (The set of programs that can run unmodified on both 2.x and 3.x is quite small.)

2.x is mainstream Python for the forseeable future. There will be a 2.7 after 2.6, and perhaps even a 2.8 and 2.9. At this point, no one can really say how quickly 3.x will be taken up.

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A couple of us have posted queries about this issue on the PyTivo forum, but so far no responses. I'm running the most recent wgw fork, and series titles are showing up in the NPL with the minor episode number - but not the season number - in the title. The new version of the metagenerator seems to be causing the episode number to show up at the end of the title rather than the beginning, but the behavior is still rather annoying, either way. How can we get the title to not show the minor episode number?

That's not what's happening, though. The video is being sent by pyTivo as SD. I know this for two reasons: One, when I press 'info' while watching a video, 1280x720 video shows as (720p). These other problem videos show as (480i). Second, when viewing the contents of my S3 from my S2, actual HD videos have the NO icon, and viewing the information for those files tells me the recording is HD and the S2 doesn't support it. It will, however, allow me to transfer any/all of the problem videos with no questions asked.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. First of all, the pyTivo FAQ predates me and is somewhat inaccurate (read wrong) with respect to how the current forks actually operate with Tivo S3/HD units. It just hasn't been updated in a while.

I use what free time I have to do support, fix ffmpeg, and try to deal with the Windows installers. The other developers work on the actual pyTivo code. But I've crawled around enough in the pyTivo code to know how this particular part of it works.

The Tivo S3/HD units are very forgiving as to the resolution and framerates they accept. This is in stark contrast to the S2 units that are very rigid and expect exact resolutions and framerates.

pyTivo also uses DIFFERENT defaults depending on whether it is sending to a Tivo S3/HD or an S2 or lower (it decides what default to use based on the TSN which has the model number at the beginning of it.) Tivo S3/HD units default to width=1280 and height=720.

For sending to Tivo S3/HD units, when the source video has a resolution equal to or lower than the defined width/height, the video is sent to the Tivo at the same resolution as the source. If you turn on pyTivo's logging, you will see the ffmpeg command line parameters used for doing the transcode. For source video with resolutions equal to or lower than the defined width/height, you will see that the -s parameter is NOT passed. Meaning that ffmpeg PRESERVES the source resolution. When you send to S2 units or the source resolution is beyond the configured width/height, the -s parameter is used to specify the target resolution.

I set my width=1920 height=1080, so pretty much everything I send to my Tivo S3 is at the source resolution. Now what the Tivo unit decides to output to your TV and how it treats the video once it has it is completely up to the Tivo and beyond pyTivo's control.

Another thing, the Tivo Info display LIES about what resolution it is outputting. The best way to tell what resolution is actually being output by the Tivo is to use the Info display of your TV (assuming it has one). There are plenty of times when I'll be watching a live 1080i broadcast and the Tivo will report it as 720p even though my Panasonic plasma's info display says 1080i. Hopefully Tivo will fix this bug with the v11 update.

Based on the S3 to S2 testing you did, it sounds like the Tivo unit itself is treating anything with height lower than 720 to be convertable to SD for output. And that setting your Tivo TV shape to Smart in the Tivo tells it to output anything less than 720 as SD rather than HD.

You yourself said that when you set the Tivo TV shape to 16:9, the same cropped 1280x5xx video is displayed as HD and with proper letterboxing only on the top and bottom. This would be impossible if pyTivo were sending an SD signal as you are saying.

pyTivo has no knowledge of the Tivo TV Shape or Aspect settings. I don't think there is even a way for the pyTivo to extract that information from your Tivo if we wanted it to.

On my setup, settings Tivo TV Shape to Smart causes the Tivo Central screen to come over in SD. I HATE this so I set it to 16:9 and the Tivo Central screen comes over at 1280x720 as reported by my TV. I've been told by others that the Tivo Central screen is actually a well designed non HD bitmap that is stretched to HD resolution for output. Hence why the Smart setting makes it come out as SD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmack

I reinstalled the wcmcbrine 8.20 last night from scratch, used only a barebones config, and did some more testing with a variety of HD videos and I discovered something important. I have been laboring under the impression that the critical measurement is width. Meaning that if the video width is 1280, it should fill the width and adjust the height proportionially. This is wrong. The critical measurement is height. If the height is not 720, the video comes over as 4:3, period. Width will be adjusted down accordingly.

I found last night that any video with a height of 720 or over will fill the screen properly. The video is proportionally adjusted, so that black bars are on top and bottom as needed, but the width fills the entire screen. I sent two different videos, one 1280x755 and 1920x800 and both transferred properly and were scaled to fit with the 1280x720 screen. Anything with a height of less than 720 transferred as 4:3, without exception.

When I first started using pyTivo, I had my Tivo Aspect set to Full which caused cropped HD heights to get stretched rather than properly letterboxed. I even proposed to add a generic padding function that would calculate the difference between the source height and either 720 or 1080 and then pass the ffmpeg parameter to border pad to the proper resolution. But then I discovered that setting Tivo Aspect to Panel in conjunction with Shape to 16:9 fixed my HD issue and stopped caring.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmack

The same thing that happens when I switch from hybrid to native; the SD picture ends up pillarboxed twice--once as a SD broadcast and then squished vertically.

Basically, if I set my TV to 16:9 instead of 'smart', I need to change my TV aspect to "panel" for these letterboxed videos to display without distortion. Viewing SD TV under these settings results in the dual pillarbox. I need to change the aspect to "full" for proper SD TV viewing.

I'm almost certain that double pillarbox effect is an issue with your TV. Is there a setting in your TV for stretching SD that you could turn on and then just use TV Shape 16:9 in your Tivo?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmack

I know that I can just switch it as needed, but that's not really the point. I don't believe the video is coming over as HD. It doesn't seem like the problem is with my TV, nor do I think it is the Tivo. I had a suspicion that it was a configuration issue, which is why I tried forcing pyTivo to send video to my S3 as 1280x720 by using the width setting in the config file. Either pyTivo is ignoring this setting or I am misunderstanding its use:

width
Default Setting: 544
Description: Allows you to choose the output dimension of the transcoded videos. SD units are limited to 720 and below. Likely HD users will want to choose a higher value. Higher values may slow down transcoding and will increase the file size. Increased file sizes take up more room on the TiVo and take longer to transfer over the network

If I set width to 1280, why isn't the transferred video 1280? What causes pyTivo to send it smaller than 1280? My assumption would be that the default setting is 544, so unless otherwise specified, video transfers at 544. But that's demonstrably not true, as I was able to transfer 1280x720 properly before I manually specified the width setting video.

Again, the FAQ is wrong. The video is transferring at the source resolution unless you lower your width and height to less than the source resolution.

If it wasn't, then using TV Shape 16:9 and Aspect Panel wouldn't magically make the video appear as HD. It's stored on the Tivo as HD, it's just output as SD based on your Shape setting.

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A couple of us have posted queries about this issue on the PyTivo forum, but so far no responses. I'm running the most recent wgw fork, and series titles are showing up in the NPL with the minor episode number - but not the season number - in the title. The new version of the metagenerator seems to be causing the episode number to show up at the end of the title rather than the beginning, but the behavior is still rather annoying, either way. How can we get the title to not show the minor episode number?

You didn't post this in the official MG threat at the pyTivo forums. I'll look into it about removing the episode number at the end of the title.

If you need help with the MG, you need to post it in the MG thread, otherwise, I probably won't see it until I am bored and start looking around other threads and forums.

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You didn't post this in the official MG threat at the pyTivo forums. I'll look into it about removing the episode number at the end of the title.

If you need help with the MG, you need to post it in the MG thread, otherwise, I probably won't see it until I am bored and start looking around other threads and forums.

His problem (episode number prefixes episode title) pre-dates the new MG and is related to wgw's fork. However the new behavior where the episode number is at the end of the episode title is probably the new MG's issue.

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That's right, so it didn't seem like the MG thread thread was the correct place for the post, plus I did not start the thread. I merely replied along with the original thread starter. Whatever the case, however, and whether MG is in part culpable or not, it's annoying.

Well, I could understand wantingto have the season and episode there, but having just the minor episode number seems totally pointless. I definitely vote for having the ability to remove it entirely, whether optionally or not. It seems to me if it is to be optional, though, then the only option that makes sense is the ability to have the season and episode both appear.

I would prefer the episode number at the front of the episode title so that they sort correctly in the Tivo display.

This does not require anything at all from pyTivo or the MetaGenerator. If you have a metafile associated with a program, the filenames on your server have nothing to do with what is displayed on the NPL, except for the order of listing. Indeed, nothing in the metafile will affect the sort order in the TiVo, and prefixing the episode names in the episodeTitle field with the season and episode number will NOT cause them to sort properly in the NPL.

To do what you want, simply name your programs and their metafiles sequentially on the server. For example, my Lord of the Rings directory looks like this:

Meanwhile, when I go into the Lord of the Rings directory in the NPL, it looks like this:

Code:

"The Fellowship of the Ring"
"The Two Towers"
"The Return of the King"

Should you so choose, you could name them 1.mpg, 2.mpg, and 3.mpg, and they would still come out with the proper names etc. in the NPL. This is true whether they are episodes of a TV series, or not. You might notice I strip any leading "The " in the filename and place it after the program name, but before the "(Recorded..." section. I do this for all files, so the sort order comes out based upon the main title name, but not with a ton of programs beginning with "The " all lumped together. The metafiles have the "The " at the beginning of the title field, however, so the full name comes out in the NPL as The 6th Day, or The Philadelphia Experiment, the former being at the very top of the list and the latter being among the "P"s.

The sort list after transferring back to the TiVo might be a different matter - I'm not sure, but then I don't recommend one transfers large groups of files back to the TiVo. There's little point, and it takes up space on the TiVo, which is limited.

If the episode parms have to be there, I would vastly prefer they appear at the end. If anything gets truncated, I would prefer it be that.

Ok, so it just streams from the PC never copies it over so good to have the tivo connected via a cable and not wireless?

Will it play .avi files?

It works fine over 802.11g wireless given that you have a decent connection. HD stuff can be a little slow in transfer depending on your computer speed. The Tivo's itself throttles transfers so going from wireless to wired only yields a small improvement (that is if you have a strong wireless signal to begin with.)

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I moved a dvr-ms file from MS Media Center recorded TV (Time 1 hr, 5 minutes) into the pytivo share file. I then downloaded it to THD where file size was 4 GB.
(THD set to 480i). Then downloaded from the THD to a Series 2. File size on the S2 was 3.97 GB. I tried to note the metadata but it seems to have disappeared. Then I downloaded the same file direct from the Tivo share to the S2. File was only 1.99 GB. Approximately half the size of the same file I downloaded from the THD. I could not notice any difference in the metadata. Both seemed to be 720 x 480. I could not detect any difference in display quality. Why the difference in file size?

Install it on your PC, for me the Windows AMD64 MSI Installer (I have Vista 64). Then I can see the share folder it creates on my PC on my Tivo.

And select the files I want say Family_trop_2008.avi and watch it on my TV through Tivo?

Is this correct or did I miss something?

Also does it leave the files on the PC just view them trough the Tivo/TV or does it physical move them over to the Tivo and store them there to watch/delete?

Thanks much

It's actually a bit more complicated than that. There are two different software suites you need to download and install: pyTivo and Python.

pyTivo is the software that enables your TiVo to play movies and music stored on your computer. It's written in a computer language called "Python" (note the "py" in the name pyTivo).

Python is a "scripted" language, which means that you run Python programs by means of a "Python Interpreter" which reads the Python scripts and converts the commands stored therein into commands your computer understands.

The URL you listed above (http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0/) is the download location for the latest version of the Python interpreter -- but, and this is extremely important, you can't use the latest version of Python with pyTivo. Version 3.0 of Python is not backwards-compatible with earlier versions, which means scripts that work under previous versions are not guaranteed to run under version 3.0. This was done on purpose by the Python developers; I haven't followed things closely enough to know if I agree with their reasoning, but they obviously think there was something important enough about this latest version to break backwards compatibility.

You should download and install the latest version of Python in the 2.6.x tree, which as of today can be found at http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.1/. I think pyTivo will work with the AMD64 version of Python (I saw some comments about that in another thread) but it's not as well-tested, so you might want to use the "Windows x86 MSI Installer" instead.

Once you've installed Python, you also need to download and install pyTivo. Unfortunately, the pyTivo download situation is a bit messier. There are several people working on pyTivo, and they each have their own versions of the basic code, called "branches". They are unsung heroes who have provided an immense amount of happiness to hundreds, if not thousands, of pyTivo users, but (in my opinion) it's a bit difficult to figure out exactly what version of pyTivo to download, especially if you're not a computer geek. Since the folks who are working on pyTivo are doing it in their spare time, out of the goodness of their hearts, and for free, it's fair to expect us to do a bit of work to get pyTivo running.

Since from the contents of your original post it seems like you're not a computer geek, I think you might want to try downloading one of these two versions:

I haven't tried doing this myself, as I downloaded pyTivo in a more computer-geeky way (from the "git repository", to be exact), but as far as I can tell each of these links points to a compressed "Zip" archive file, which you should be able to open with freely-available Windows utilities. You should be able to extract the Windows installer "exe" file stored in the zip file you downloaded. Run this installer to install pyTivo.

You then need to configure pyTivo. There are helpful comments and links on this page:

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